2000 years ago, Jesus refused to lead a rebellion as expected of the Messiah of the Jews. But, He did start a revolution that overturned or transformed governments, leading up to the democracies that we have today. I'll explain why Jesus said to turn the other cheek. I describe how Jesus and John the Baptist set the example of protesting against governments, and how to reconcile this with the Romans 13 passage we all know and love.
Christians are called to be salt and light in the world.
Will some people find us too salty, or the light will hurt their eyes? Yes.
To do this, will we have to work in the world with people who have different priorities? Yes.
Do we have a responsibility to use the authority God gave us? Absolutely!
I was asked recently whether Christians should get involved in political debates like vaccine mandates. I realize that there are lots of instances where people have crossed the line. I’d like to clarify where the lines should probably be, in a free, democratic country. I believe we must consider the God-given spheres of authority given to the family, church and government. When the government infringes upon the other two, Christians need to remind them of their place. Who is better suited to the job?
I would propose, for example:
It is not for the church to say how many kids you should have
It is not for the government to say what vaccines my kids have to get.
It is not for the government to say how many people can attend a church, if they may sing worship songs, or which people must be excluded from the service according to their medical status (AIDS, Covid). Etc.
In this article, I will be discussing this issue using the Bible as an authoritative book for living. For those of you who don’t consider the Biblical basis important, stay tuned for the reasoning from other points of view in a future article.
The Bible tells us many things that clearly still apply today. However, the Bible is not meant to tell us precisely everything we are to do in our daily lives. That's what the Holy Spirit is for. The Bible doesn't say whether I should accept this job offer or not. It does not tell us specifically what to do when it comes to smoking, or driving, because these things didn't exist at the time. We can still draw comparisons and lessons, however. The same applies to being a citizen in a democratic republic.
This being the case, I feel like I need to approach the societal background of this issue for Canada 2022, as well as the Biblical support, to be dealt with more fully in another article.
The general assumption is that everyone else is extremely biased – that they are so inextricably intertwined in our thoughts and identity that we aren't even aware of what they are. The social consequence of this kind of thinking is this. Everyone has their own truth and there is no way to determine if one version is better than another. Since you are completely biased in all you say, then there is no point in even listening to you if you aren't in my camp. Legacy media has become a major contributor to this problem of hidden biases and social media has become a major source of support for your own biases.
A Democratic Society needs a Christian Foundation
At the same time, the Christian foundations of our democratic societies have fallen into disrepute. Foundational truths like: we are all created in God's image and so have intrinsic value. If this is not true, then there is no reason for you to think of me as worthy of respect.
They knew that it is so important to be understood as true that it is even written into the Preamble of the American Declaration of Independence. Bible quotes are carved in the stone walls of the Canadian Parliament buildings. First line of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states: “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the Rule of Law.” In a democracy, it is the citizen's responsibility to maintain those principles. Without this, we lead back into tribalism, and it is the end of democracy.
The founders understood that God's law is the moral compass for man. Within a nation, Christians may be the only bearings on that compass that unbelievers will see. If we are not standing publicly for keeping that moral compass in the government sphere, then you end up with a house falling off its foundations.
This is exactly what has happened in communist regimes. In Russian culture, where there has been no Christian influence in society for a century, it is considered honourable to break the rules. They live by the saying, “you're not a thief if you don't get caught.” Cheating in the Olympics is a good thing. If you don't have the 10 Commandments, who is to say otherwise?
I recognize that Christians are not called to prop up any particular type of government, but I would venture to say that it would be tougher to carry the gospel message in a tyranny than when we have the freedoms to openly declare the Gospel. I may be wrong; the early Christians did their job pretty well in the Roman Empire. However, it behooves us to make it the best we can as an example of good citizenship of heaven, as well as our earthly nation.
The development of democracy took centuries of trying to get to where we are today. Democracy is fragile, so it wouldn't be difficult to make it crumble. There are plenty of signs in the last few years of prominent people instigating divisions between us and them (gay and straight, cis and trans gender, black and white, French and English, leftist and right wing, humanist and religious) within countries. There has been increasing intolerance of 'them', who are inevitably portrayed as extremist. It is a waste of time to get into anybody's conspiracy theories (I don't have any) but for now, it is sufficient to say that there are people in this world who would like to see the end of democracy and become dictators.
Where are the Christians in the Democratic Building (above the Foundation)?
If, on the other hand, Christians rise as leaders in their respective fields, in protests, movements and organizations, they can instill these values in the people around them by their example. Joseph, Moses, Nehemiah, and Daniel, all rose to prominent places in the pagan government of their time, and fulfilled their role in a Godly manner. In the effort to further a goal that God has put on our heart, this may well involve working along side people with different ethics and theologies from us, They will have their own reasons for attaining this goal, but I don't believe God is too worried about that. They will see that our reasons and our means is God. Just as when Joseph in the Old Testament was true to himself and his God, people had to take notice.
People today refer to the 'Good Samaritan' as if Samaritans were known for being good. Jesus answered the question, 'Who is my neighbour?' by telling this story. In fact, making a Samaritan the hero of his story would have been scandalous to the people listening to him. The Jews of his day despised them as being entirely unholy and far from God. So, if Jesus elevated the reputation of the Samaritans, surely we can work with our neighbours who don't agree theologically with us.
As Christians, we believe that we have been given the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised would guide us into all truth (Jn 16:13). Of course we have our biases, that we are seeking to put to death with the old man as we see them crop up. These should cause us to have humility whenever we speak, knowing that only God Himself is perfect. It should not however give us a spirit of fear, so that we don't speak. But, of power and of love and of a sound mind (II Tim 1:7). As we are being transformed from glory to glory by the ministry of the Spirit, the light will shine more clearly through us, with more of Christ and less of our biases (II Cor 3:18).
Paul said that since they have such great hope in the ministry of the Spirit, they use great boldness of speech (II Cor 3:12). Do we? What else does the Bible say about how we can speak boldly, and about what? What is our role?
Family Sphere of Authority
Now that Christ has sent His Spirit to us, our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit (I Cor 6:19). So, we honour our own body. The family is a unit instituted by God. We believe in the priesthood of all believers that we are a spiritual house, a holy priesthood (I Pet 2:5-9). Fathers are instructed to treat their children well as the priest responsible for their soul. Husbands and wives are told that their body belongs to each other (I Cor 7:4). Husbands are told to take care of his wife as Christ loved the church (Eph 5:23ff). He is to be the protector of the family. Our fathers disciplined us as they saw fit – we honour them for that (Heb 12:9). This is his sphere of authority.
Church Sphere of Authority
As a family of God, we support fellow believers. We are to bear one another's burdens (Gal 6:2). We are the body of Christ. Part of 'love one another' is sticking up for them when they are fired illegally, being forced to take an experimental drug against their will, etc. If one part of the body is hurting, the whole church is hampered by it.
Christians are to be a voice for the voiceless. We support the marginalized in society. We may be doing the same thing as secular social justice warriors, and can team up with them. However, God's idea of justice may well have a very different focus than theirs.
As Christians, we are crying out for justice to God, but also to the culprit or to the government. However, our focus is not retribution. We don't take revenge (vengeance is Mine, says the Lord.) So, since He knows all that is in men's hearts and we don't, we let Him take care of that part. We are not concerned that the culprit gets punished as long as the injured party gets compensated. This, I believe is God's sense of justice. God has given us all justice, by having paid us back in full for all that was stolen from us. At the same time, God has paid for all of my sins in full, to those I've sinned against.
See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good both for yourselves and for all (I Thess 5:15). For as long as the unbeliever is doing this, we can partner with him. Pursue is a very active word. It doesn't mean we have to just sit here and not try for more. As Paul says, if you slaves have the chance to become a freeman, take it!
Hopefully, they can learn something of God's ways as they work with us. By the same token, we can learn from others, if we're looking for the bits of truth that they have acquired. First Nations peoples have the tradition of looking at the 7th generation when making big decisions for their tribe. How is this going to affect them? The Old Testament says that the sins of the fathers will affect the 3rd and 4th generation after them. These are reminders that we must watch out what we do; there are consequences.
It's just me doing my own thing and it doesn't hurt anyone else - A Big Lie! But it's a lie western society has fallen for, hook, line and sinker. The individual is supreme. While I agree that it is at the level of the individual that consequences must apply, there are natural consequences that affect the person's whole sphere of influence. My work colleagues, children, wife, extended family are all affected by how I choose to live my life. It's more comfortable for me to think that any decision I make is in a vacuum – but, it's not.
For all of its faults, one thing the Climate Change movement has driven home is this idea that what I do today is going to have an affect on future generations. Something has gotten over the years, in our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness - our compass. In Genesis, we are told that God created, 'and it was good'. We are called to be co-creators with Him. If the order that we create out of the chaos is based on the truth, it too will be good.
Government Sphere of Authority
(Rom 13:4) government has the sword for a reason - defense and punishment. That's it! Yes, I realize that governments have taken over a lot of responsibilities over the years. Yes, they can also provide roads, access healthcare, and various things, but the function only to provide services, but not forcing people to use them. The function of the government is to protect the population.
There is nothing Biblical or historical that points to the notion that the state has the God-given responsibility or authority to determine and control the nature of human health and well-being. This would preclude any Covid state regulations preventing elderly from seeing their grandchildren, blocking the access of pastors to the dying at their bedside, or shutting down public worship.
Historically, even determining the need to quarantine a sick person is not given to the state in the Bible, but was determined by the health provision of the priests and Levites.
The church has a long history of providing healthcare and hospitals as an extension of its ministry of ‘hospitality.’ Only in the mid twentieth century did churches cede this domain to the state. None of this is to say that the state does not have an important and legitimate role under the sovereignty of God and His Word. But the church has her own king, and it isn’t the state. Even if the President or Prime Minister seems to think he is god!
It is time for the church to remind all authorities that Jesus Christ is Lord. We all as citizens need to be re-claiming our sovereign jurisdiction and step up to our responsibilities, rather than complaining to the state about our rights, reclaiming from the State what they have improperly taken over, to free these domains. When Christians assume responsibility for the unfolding of human societal relationships, the public legal order of the state will not threaten, but protect religious freedom
If the church had not run Indian Residential Schools designed by the state but rather on Biblical principles, maybe it wouldn't have so much to apologize for.
If the church had continued to run hospitals as a charity and not for profit, without government interference, our healthcare system may have been in better shape to face the pandemic.
Setting aside the issue of whether these restrictions and vaccinations have done much to reduce the scope of this virus, the state needs to justify stepping out of its sphere of authority. Here are a couple of real life examples.
A huge non-story in the legacy media in Canada last spring was the arrest of a pastor for holding a church service in Alberta. Another one is still in prison. Several churches were locked down in Ontario, “Church is Essential” marches took place across North America, with thousands of supporters. Last month in Ottawa,
Freedom Convoy 2022 protesting Covid mandates caught worldwide attention. More in another article on what happens to society when these spheres aren't respected.
The underlying question is who has the authority to decide this. Is it you or me as individuals, our family, businesses, the church, or the state?
Pandemic Challenges
Many people say that this pastor was wrong to defy the church closure regulation because Romans chapter 13 in the Bible says that Christians must do what the government says.
Pastor Coates' explanation of Romans 13 is that subjection and obedience are 2 different things. Christians are called to be subjected to the government, not obey it. You can be submissive to the government while not obeying every law. Submission means that we subject ourselves to the consequences of our actions if we go against the government's laws.
For example, Pastor Coates turned himself in to authorities instead of going into hiding. That is how he exercised submission to the government without obeying what his (and their elders) conscience felt was disobeying a command from God, namely, restricting how many people a church can have in their building.
God ordained government. Therefore, all government is delegated by God. Romans 13 teaches that our subjection to the government depends upon their subjection to Him from whom they receive their authority (even when they do not recognize it as such).
The often cited Ps 119 repeatedly uses these seven words: God's word, precepts, commands, law, statutes, ordinances, and judgements. It sounds like the world was created with a foundation of its own legal system. If we believe that a command goes against God's word in the Bible, we are in the position of having to decide whether to follow God or the government (Acts 4:19).
Pastor Coates maintained that the government has over-stepped their God-given authority by dictating to churches how they may worship (ex. who may sing) and how many may worship in their building. God has delegated church governance, not to the state, but to the elders of the church.
Various believers and churches have made different decisions on these matters. That is a decision that needs to be left between the individual and God.
By these policies, the government has taken that decision away from the individuals and from the church leadership and crossed the line out of their sphere.
Biblical Models of Interacting with the Government Sphere of Authority
We are called to be salt and light in the world: the conscience of the society. Not by accusing; by example. How does this play out in daily life?
The Old Testament prophets boldly spoke words of correction to their kings; sometimes not very nice words from God. Since we also have the Holy Spirit, we are to be prophets to our nations, speaking on God's behalf. We have more freedoms now than in ancient societies, so we have more responsibilities to use the opportunities that we've been given.
So how are we to act when we disagree with our government, because we feel that God disagrees with what they are doing? Should we just meekly accept it when the government tries to usurp the authority of church or family? How meek and mild was Jesus when the ruling class was turning the Temple into a Den of Thieves? When speaking to the Pharisees who ruled over the Jews, did Jesus and John the Baptist submit to them and not argue? They called them white washed tombs (the ultimate in being unholy), snakes (as in Garden of Eden), foxes (fox didn't mean nice furry little animal anymore than SOB means a puppy), etc.! King Herod was not really appreciative of John's commentary!
Now I agree that I am not as attuned to the HS as John or Jesus, and recognize that we have to be very careful in any of this. However, the consequences of not following their lead are very serious indeed. God allowed the Isrealites to be taken captive to Babylon because they didn't take Him seriously.
We have all heard the instruction to believers to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile. I believe these have been wildly misused. Remember that Jesus is giving these examples in the context of a repressive government. The whole idea of instructing the Jews to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile is not to be NICE! The tactic is known as 'subverting his expectation”. The idea is to throw the person off balance by doing something unexpected. It is to give the person in authority a chance to hear his conscience, stop and think about what he's doing and change his ways. This is the best way to reform a government - one by one.
All this is done without mounting any armed insurrection. But it does require confronting the authority who is overstepping. It is nice if a letter writing campaign or face to face meetings with our elected representatives have an effect. But if not, peaceful demonstrations of protest is part of the democratic process we have available to us that was not available in Jesus' time. Indications from Paul's epistles are that he was implementing this tactic from the very start of the church. He wasn't shy to tell an armed guard that he was a Roman citizen and this treatment of him was illegal. In his letters, he lists people in Rome and even Caesar's court who are now greeting churches as fellow believers!
Jesus tells the Pharisees to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. This implies that there are levels of authority. They are each due honour in their own space: God over everything, and governments in their own sphere.
These other levels are not to interfere with God's rule of authority. Even family, if your family are trying to deter you from following Jesus. To the man who says, “Let me go and bury my father at his funeral first,” Jesus tells him to let the dead bury their own dead. And to hate your family in comparison to Christ, if they are trying to get between you and God.
Notice how Jesus dealt with the ruling authorities who confronted Him (Mt 21:23ff). Did He just do whatever they asked Him to? Within the Roman Empire, in Jerusalem, these elders were the governing class. Jesus' authority as a church leader is being challenged. As if he were their equal, he challenges them with a question in return. If they won't answer him, he refuses to answer them! He also refuses to stop teaching in the Temple, which is of course what they wanted. I see parallels in our government today, if they refuse to listen to the church leaders who are speaking up.
Then, of course, there is the little incident of Jesus overturning tables in the Temple. Leaders had authorized merchants to come into the Temple to sell things, when they had no authority to do that. Does Jesus submit a proposal to these people who are overstepping? No. He stages a demonstration!
When Jesus made a whip and overturned the money changers' tables and kicked them out of the Temple, that can't have been according to civil law, but “zeal for your house has consumed me” (Jn 2:17) For Jesus, evidently God's Law took precedence over the laws of the current state.
These things may not square with the Christmas story image of Jesus meek and mild, but they are Biblical. In the Garden of Gethsemane when Peter chops off the ear of the soldier, Jesus reprimands him, saying if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword (Mt 26:52). He is not saying that we just have to let evil win. Jesus told them to pray that they not to be tempted to take the easy way out, in preparation for this event. And, if the Father doesn't remove the cup, then follow His will, trusting that God has a better way for justice to be served. And if God tells you to overturn some tables, be prepared to do that!
Using Authority in Humility
So, all of this is not permission to go off half-cocked, tilting at windmills, every time we are upset about some situation. The Christians I know have done prayer and fasting, waiting on an answer from Holy Spirit before taking action in Ottawa. To me, the fact that Police were not able to find them guilty of anything other than parking violations and mischief, is a testimony to the peace of God they exuded. I can see no other explanation for their ability to stay that calm in the face of severe intimidation from people in power. After being in jail for weeks, the organizer was released the day after hundreds of people in a prayer meeting in Ottawa worshipped God and prayed for her release.
Speaking God's truth to power in His love, by the authority He has given you is the furthest thing from being selfish. It is putting yourself in harm's way for the sake of your brothers in Christ and fellow citizens. It is humbly putting the community's needs before your own needs. It is seeing what is happening in the spiritual realm, despite what it looks like on the ground. It is putting yourself at God's disposal, and stepping out in faith in Him, as His servant.
This sounds Biblical to me.
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